\ \. ) . . ... . ) ,...::q 1\' - \ ,,- .: , . - II> ) .. )., sa ,.. I ' ( , I j. \ ,..... - Color forecasts for 2008 are influenced by the war in Iraq and the resurgence of India. teen-seventies. (The refrigerators out- lasted the color's popularity, creating a vicious backlash.) During the ensuing decades, all yellow-based greens-often kn " k "" " own as pu e green or snot green - were off limits. Harrington was raised in Ontario, where her mother supported their fam- ily by working at a Benjamin Moore paint store (her father died when she was eight). "I grew up in what I call 'the matchy-poo era'-when women like my mother went to all this trouble to make sure that the towels matched the sheets, which matched my walls, which matched my wardrobe, which matched g my car," she told me. In high school, she w was too shy to order a pizza, and she flunked an English class for refusing to complete the public-speaking project. To help her overcome the problem, her mother began bringing her into the paint store every day and making her wait on customers, something she con- tinued to do through college, at the nearby International Academy of Mer- chandising and Design. Shortly before graduating, she got a call from Benjamin Moore's Canadian headquarters. The company was pre- paring to launch a North American road show to promote a new computer- ized color-matching system, and the person who was supposed to run the show had fallen ill. Harrington recalled, "Apparently, somebody in corporate said, 'How about that girl at the T 0- ronto store? She knows everything.' " Harrington has an M.B.A. from New York University and has recently earned her Ph.D., via a distance-learn- ing program, in "color strategy," a disci- pline of her own design. But her first major contribution, when she was at Benjamin Moore, was to have invented "smooshing"-both the term and the technique. It involves applying sheets of plastic wrap to wet paint in order to cre- ate a marbled surface on walls. "I started the whole thing, put it in a book we sold in the stores, and it was huge in the eighties, when people were really paint- ing their own rooms and making effects," she recalled. "It's got, like, sixty thousand hits on Coogle, and I never got a penny from it." She also has proprietary feelings about her terms "Color Sellability" and "Color Shopability." One of Harrington's current proj- ects is to develop a range of colors for a manufacturer of residential siding. The company, James Hardie Industries, which is based in the Netherlands but has American headquarters in Califor- nia, is eager to use its fifteen-year color warranty as a selling point, but the lon- gevity makes the choice of color that much more important. "The risk calculations are greater the larger, more expensive, and more dura- ble the product," Harrington told me. "The consumer is more risk-averse when it comes to choosing a color. This is the central challenge with all exteriors. It means we're working with a smaller segment of the color wheel. On the other hand, what good is colored siding if they don't have choices?" In some high-population-growth markets such as Houston, a Hardie house tends to be situated in a subdivision of Hardie houses. "And nobody wants to have the same color home as their next-door neighbors," Harrington said. It bothers Harrington when people .c h " L "" Th . reler to er as a tastemaKer. e In- dustrial-design element of what I do is probably more critical than taste," she told me. Her background in light house- hold construction goes back almost as long as her experience with paint. 'When I was just out of college and my couch didn't fit in my living room, I got a circular saw and turned it into two reading chairs." She built by hand her work studio in Connecticut, in what was formerly her attic-from insulation to Sheetrock to cabinetry. For Christmas, she always asks for new power tools- THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 22, 2007 43